Tanzania: Tobacco Smokers Must Kick the Offending Habit

Source from:  Tanzania Daily News 07/23/2015

A WIDE range of tobacco preparations including snuff (ugoro) and varieties of crude homemade cigarettes are popular among residents in rural Tanzania.

No wonder respiratory infections emanating from habitual tobacco smoking have been cited by the medical world as notorious killers. Conventional or more sophisticated cigarettes are more prevalent in our cities, municipalities and towns.

Tobacco consumption - especially cigarette smoking - is a worldwide phenomenon and is even more prevalent in the developed world. But it is a nagging medical headache.

Mr Nkoro Maganga, a 55-year-old peasant from Chilonwa Village in Dodoma Rural District, who came to Dar es Salaam to beg last week, says he took up tobacco smoking nearly 20 years ago.

He says tobacco is so addictive that abusers often fail to kick the diabolical habit. Maganga says he was introduced to tobacco smoking by a friend with whom he tended cattle.

Initially, he says, he found it difficult to inhale the smoke that appeared to assail not only his chest and lungs but also his nostrils. What he was smoking was crushed, sun-dried tobacco leaves rolled in paper.

Twenty years down the road, today, Maganga can no longer kick the habit. In fact, apart from smoking raw tobacco, he sniffs snuff as well. He tucks some of it inside his lower lip, a practice that increases the foul smell that, invariably, wafts from his mouth.

A medical doctor with the Aga Khan Hospital in Dar es Salaam, who prefers anonymity, says that health complications, especially respiratory impairments, take many lives worldwide.

He says smokers sometimes pass problems to non-smokers around them through what is known as passive smoking. It is common to see smokers puffing in crowded places in Tanzanian urban centres.

Smokers often puff in busses, hospitals, libraries, restaurants, bars, and banks and even in government offices, sometimes in front of signs that prohibit the habit.

But smoking in public or crowded places is restricted by law and is punishable. Unfortunately, no law bans the manufacture of cigarettes in this country.

The government earns billions from the cigarette industry and their imports. But the government has made it a rule of thumb to have a warning note posted on every cigarette advertisement saying it has been determined that "cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health."

The same advert is displayed on cigarette packs and is designed to warn smokers and potential smokers against the habit. But the advert does not seem to have much impact on the fraternity of smokers.

One reason is that smoking takes its tall after twenty or more years. So, the law makes it imperative for tobacco companies to warn consumers of their products on underlying dangers of smoking.

A few years ago, a Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Health, Dr Hussein Mwinyi, (now Minister for Defence and National Service) told the National Assembly that smoking in public places was a crime.

He said the law that deters smoking in public is designed to protect minors and adults who do not smoke against the health complications that are wrought by smoking.

The law also seeks to achieve the highest safety standards in cigarettes. Dr Mwinyi said smoking is restricted in hospitals, dispensaries and other health centres; public libraries; churches, mosques and other places of worship, in planes, trains, buses, ships and other facilities for travel; assembly halls, markets, shops and other similar places.

He said anyone infringing the law would be liable to a fine not exceeding 500,000/- or a jail term not exceeding three years or both. He said whoever will be affected by cigarette smoke at a public place has the right to institute a litigation in a court of law.

Other anti-smoking efforts have seen the Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum (TTCF) urging the government to introduce alternative cash crops in tobacco growing areas because tobacco growers encountered more health hazards than direct benefits from their work.

The Chairperson of the forum, Ms Lutgard Kagaruki, told members of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and Lands and the Investment and Trade Committee at a seminar that tobacco was as harmful to growers as it was to consumers. She said tobacco growers, handlers and smokers were exposed to dozens of ailments most of which were fatal.

She added that although tobacco was a money-spinner when it came to export earnings, the national income from the crop did not trickle down to the growers.

It is unthinkable that apart from indulging in tobacco smoking, children are involved in tobacco processing in plantations or small-scale family farms.

And, apart from being exposed to health hazards, the children are engaged in one of the worst forms of labour. It has been determined that tobacco handling, which involves harvesting, curing, drying, packing and transporting, always exposes workers to serious health risks.

Children working in tobacco plantations or those who help out in family farms often contract life-threatening illnesses. In fact, children are exposed to health hazards brought on by tobacco smoke even before they are born.

Pregnant women who smoke or chew tobacco risk generating an ectopic pregnancy (featus located outside the placenta) or rupturing of the placenta (abruption placenta). Women smokers also risk giving birth prematurely or bringing forth, underweight babies or even stillborns.

Sometimes, smoking women bear children with cleft lips (split lips) or tiny legs. Sudden infant death syndrome is also common in children aged under a year.

Smoking is also on record for crippling the limbs of infants or impairing their mental state. Lactating mothers who smoke wreck the health of their infants in many ways. Respiratory complications, infected ears, laboured breathing and peptic ulcers are likely to occur.

Children are also likely to get pneumonia and other respiratory problems if they live in an environment that is filled with smoke, including food curing smoke.

Children, however, are particularly at greater risk when exposed to tobacco smoke. Parents who smoke expose their children to a very hostile environment.

Coughs, colds, pneumonia, tuberculosis and others are nasty health hazards for both children and adults. Coughs and colds spread easily especially in overcrowded areas. Paediatricians advice that people with coughs or colds should avoid coughing, sneezing or spitting near children. Sometimes, coughs and colds are signs of more serious problems.

A child who is breathing rapidly or with difficulty might have pneumonia, an infection of the lungs. The lawmakers were also told that 25 per cent of adults in Dar es Salaam were cigarette smokers and that over 40 per cent of villagers in Morogoro Rural and Hai districts consumed tobacco products.

Recent research has shown that nearly ten per cent of students smoke cigarettes or chew Asian tobacco in schools. Most Asian tobacco is smuggled into the country.

Cigarettes expose smokers to 90 per cent of all known cancers. The numerous ailments include respiratory complications, stroke, emphysema, bronchitis, eschaemic heart diseases, high blood pressure and impotence.

Other major health problems associated with tobacco use as loss of sight, skin wrinkles, smelly breath, ugly face, hypertension, infarction, and an array of cancers that include lung cancer; colorectal cancer, mouth cancer, cervix cancer and throat cancer.

He told the MPs that cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 deadly chemicals, 60 of which cause a variety of cancers. He named some of the chemicals as acetone, arsenic, butane, cadmium, carbon monoxide, methanol, nicotine, phenol, toluene and hydrogen cyanide. Enditem